It seems that almost every person who enjoys computer-based
games has, at some point, sat down with a copy of some version of
SimCity and tried it out. For some, the lure
of godlike power over an entire city paled in comparison to the
blood and gore of their favorite first-person shooters. (It does
take a certain someone to try to organize the myriad workings and
economics of an entire city when they could just as easily run
around blasting bad guys with plasma rifles in a space arena
somewhere.) Some of us, however, have sat down with a
SimCity variant only to snap out of our
game-induced stupor half a day later, finding ourselves the mayor
of a city with a quarter-million happy citizens. For us, these
top-down, huge-scale simulated world games could be laced with
narcotics and not have any more appeal, and SimCity 3000
Unlimited is the best of the best in a game genre it
helped to create.

The Story

SimCity 3000 Unlimited is the latest
installment in what has become Maxis' flagship series and is the
first to make it to Linux. There is no real story line, per se,
though it is playable in short bursts in games with specific goals.
As we'll talk about in a minute, the most powerful
SimCity 3000 addictions come from its prowess
in open-ended games that allow players to build an entire
metropolis completely from scratch. You start with a little money
and a plot of land that you get to modify to your own personal
specifications. Then you start creating your city, zoning areas for
the desired type of development in the area, implementing an array
of complex civil engineering feats and performing various city
management duties, like balancing a budget, implementing taxation
on your citizens, passing ordinances, etc. As you get more money
from taxation, your city grows organically (you get more money, you
expand your city in a way that attracts people, more people move
in, you get more money), and through dealings with other nearby
cities, you can create relationships to facilitate your city's
growth. In this mode of play, the game is basically done when you
think you've accomplished all you can with the design you've
chosen. Then you go back and start again, using lessons you've
learned from previous cities to make your new city even
better.

New for SimCity 3000 Unlimited is the
ability to again play “scenarios”, a feature found on
SimCity 2000 but notably absent in the first
release of SimCity 3000 (the non-Unlimited
version). These thirteen new scenarios basically put you in a
specific situation in a prebuilt city and challenge you to use your
expert leadership skills to save the day. For example, in the
“Criminalville” scenario, mobs haven taken over Moscow, and it's
your job to sort out the mess and give them what they want. In
“Fall of the Wall”, you must connect East and West Berlin and
“bring balance to the city”. Some of these scenarios are quite
easy and can be played in 45 minutes to an hour, while others will
have you biting your lip in frustration at 4
A.M. on a Tuesday.

Game Play

As one might expect from a game whose focus is on minute
fiscal and physical management of a huge metropolis,
SimCity 3000 Unlimited's game play may seem
complex at first. If you've played a SimCity
version before, the overall feel will be quite close to that,
though there are some evolutionary interface enhancements that will
seem natural to a veteran. If you've never played
SimCity before (what planet are you from
again?), the controls may seem a bit much at first. However, they
will become as natural as breathing with minimal effort on your
part. Maxis has gone to great pains to make
SimCity's interface as user-friendly and
intuitive as possible.

Figure 1. Maxis has gone to great pains to make the interface as
user-friendly as possible.

At the start of the game, you're able to model the
approximately 100 square miles of landscape to your own personal
specifications and to a high degree of detail. No longer are you
limited to simply settling for a randomly generated map; with
SC3U, you can create a random map or edit
every feature (from mountains, to lakes, to trees or anything else)
of a map of your choosing, or you can opt to
use a map based on the topographies of several famous cities, such
as Bonn, London and Boston. You can also opt for the types of
terrain you want your selected landscape to be placed on (from
desert to snow-covered), what style of buildings will be built and
even which of the five available varieties of plant life will grow
in your world. The grid's appearance is highly
customizable; not only can the basic types of buildings be chosen,
but SC3U's Building Replacement Manager allows
you to swap out old-style buildings you don't like for new ones of
your choosing. Don't like any of the seemingly endless array of
prefabricated buildings available to you? Use SimCity
3000's Building Architect Plus to modify existing
buildings or create your own complex structures from scratch using
BAP's 3-D building creation environment. Remember now, this isn't
the game, just the options available to play
the game. While this level of complexity may not appeal to
everyone, it's nice to know it's an option if you want it.

Figure 2. Total Control: SC3U's Terrain Editor

The game itself is played continuously (though it can be
paused) as your city grows. You create and control everything from
transportation infrastructure (subways, trains, roads, airports,
seaports, etc.) to the placement of landmarks, from outfitting and
maintaining the police department to managing your city's water
supply and running appropriate plumbing to your neighborhoods.
You're in charge of controlling pollution and dealing with the
city's garbage problems. You must zone your city appropriately to
attract a balance of residents with industry for them to work in
and commercial businesses for them to spend their hard-earned cash
in. (There are even three types of each of these zones—low, medium
and dense—corresponding to the types of businesses/residences
you're looking to build in a given area.) You still control
taxation, but this is no longer your only source of income; you can
pass ordinances that will make your city money (allowing gambling
and casinos, for example) and/or generally make your city a better
place. You can also make special trade agreements with nearby
cities to put money in your pocket. For instance, is your water
system more than adequate for your city's current needs? Why not
sell some of that water to a neighbor for a while? To keep the
mayor apprised with the latest information as the game progresses,
you're kept up to date by a scrolling ticker along the bottom of
your screen, which is actually a refreshing change from the
somewhat irritating newspaper-style information windows that would
occasionally pop up in earlier versions. You also have a staff of
advisors who freely offer their opinions to you from time to time
and who are available to consult with when you are uncertain about
how to proceed.

Figure 3. Consulting with Advisors and Balancing a Budget in Tokyo

The SC3U graphics are superb. Each
building is actually created in a 3-D environment with painstaking
detail. You'll find more than 400 different varieties of buildings
(hundreds more than previous SimCity
versions). What's more, if you decide halfway through the game that
you want to switch on the fly to a completely different style of
architecture (say, from European to Asian), you can do it with the
press of a mouse button. You can even build any of the dozens of
included real-life landmarks like the World Trade Center, United
Nations building or the Eiffel Tower to spruce up your city's
skyline. Also, the in-game animations are just awesome. The
Thanksgiving parades are optional, but when you choose to have
them, zoom in for a close view and what you'll see is nothing short
of amazing; full screens of people, marching bands, shriners in
little cars, floats and even those huge inflated parade balloons;
all taking their time to meander down your streets from one end of
town to the other. This level of attention to detail is really one
of the main reasons SC3U looks so good.

Figure 4. Create Your Own Structures with the Building Architect
Plus

Find that your city is looking just too
good and you want another challenge? Why not unleash one of the
many canned disasters on your city and then try to clean up the
mess? There are four new disasters in SC3U not
found in earlier versions, as well as a great collection of old
favorites, from riots to plagues of locusts to Armageddon-like
space debris. If you want to make it interesting (or are just
feeling destructive), the fine folks at Maxis have given you the
tools to do it.

The music is, well, it's Maxis—you sort of expect the music
to be a bit weird. It's soft and soothing and prone to put you in a
trancelike state of mayoral bliss for extended periods of time, but
it can get old after a while. I found myself
switching off the computer speakers to help me concentrate from
time to time. Again, this isn't a cut on the music per se, it is
well-done music, but any music would probably
start to get old after the half-days of gaming that
SC3U can induce.